[Notes from a Drawn to the Page workshop at The Towner Gallery, Eastbourne, on my first encounter with Sweatopia (The Cry of the Gland II) by Jitish Kallat, 2010]

dense matting of human

piled up motor vehicles

abstracted body parts

scattered words on a barbed wire fence

the sweat of my bones breaking out                                                       of my ribs

my head a maze                               of jumbled trash

tangled                 misused                               distorted

shadows of the city

stalk my shouders

raining thick

black                      oil

to choke

my muscled heart

 

inside my soul, an empty room

shadows of disintegration

ruin

my hair

silent eyes

staring straight ahead

my mind wants

to break free

but instead

it just

explodes

trickling down

my shoulders

 

*

divisible by three

in parts and pieces

three

*

the layers of

mysoulmyself

in static fusion

 

who i am

i break  in            three

the borders

of myself                                                                             divide

me from                                                                                                              myself

i am emptiness

 

 

inside time          inside space                                                                                                       outside

beyond                                                                                within

i am                                        inside me                            and outside                        myself

dis                   placed

consciousness

beyond the borders of my mind my body broken

my spine escapes me through my brain

 

i feel it in my visceral organs

the empty room inside me

leaking out in ink black drips

and sinister shades

my heart beats

outside                                                                 myself

 

*

words

the words that

disembowel me

disembody my distorted muscles

mucous membrane

sweat glands cry in anguish                                                         and despair

open me out

with words that become              borders                                                in your eyes

 

in silence my heart opens

blossoms in the parched earth

between your shoulders

in this violent assault of car crash victims

i am borderless

my shapes meet your outlines

and my ribs heart spine                 break free

explode my borders

tender boundaries beyond touch

tender surface grazed and fractured

the heartbreaking pain                                                                  of new life

*

reach in to touch my

organs

as they cry with sweat-salt tears

is it heat               or dust oppression          that makes them leak so black?

*

in a look of the eyes a world

is brought within me

a touch of skin on

skin transcends

my isolation                                                                                        yet deepens it beyond despair

 

a word in space and silence

crosses worlds  between us

 

tear me open

with your touches

tender lips on

heart-bruised skin

the lips you use to speak

me         bite me open drink my blood

in tongues of fashion

 

an assault upon my senses

crosses borders of myself

is this world inside

or beyond me –

when my organs are displayed

my ruptured spine bleeds black

and this violent city’s on my mind –

how has our consciousness

entwined?